The Green Leaves of Summer
by Berlioz II
Summary: Daisuke is head-over-heels in love, but Satoshi doesn't want to listen. A bit humorous, a bit dramatic. Nothing serious, really. Based in the manga verse after Vol.13.


_I started this a long while back, but kinda lost interest in the middle of writing it. I only now got up and finished it off. It probably is a bit pointless in a way when compared to some of my other writings, but I guess it isn't really terrible. Hope you enjoy it anyway._

_DNAngel © Yukiru Sugisaki, 1997  
Original Story © Berlioz II, 2009_

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"Ahhhh…" Daisuke sighed as he sat down for lunch on the school roof.

The blue-haired boy genius already sitting there eating his lunch gave a sidelong glance to his red-haired friend, but said nothing, figuring Daisuke's sigh was just another one of those rhetorical ones he was wont of giving every now and again.

"Such a great weather! The world looks so good!" Daisuke exclaimed, earning another glance, but not much else.

Silence ensued once more, only interrupted by the sounds of eating and the gentle rustles of nature. The two had made it a habit of eating together during lunch period. It was something that would have been unfeasible in the early days of their acquaintance, but which over the time they had known each other had become almost like a ritual they liked to engage in… that is when Daisuke wasn't engaged with certain other interests that had been getting more and more prevalent over the last few months.

For Daisuke it was the desire to help his friend out, since he always seemed so tragic and lonely, by offering companionship for the boy with the cool eyes - and particularly after hearing of Satoshi's less-than-happy projections of life, it made Daisuke want to offer even more support for his lonely sharer of circumstances. For Satoshi, it was something to tolerate, though he secretly liked it. In a way, Satoshi didn't properly know how to regulate either to work in a balanced whole… to keep his friendship intact without endangering Daisuke's life while doing it - but he tried the best he could to make ends meet for the time that was allocated to him due to the whole "curse of the Hikaris" deal.

It wasn't really easy and despite trying to remain careful, Satoshi had not always managed to succeed in this ever-raging battle between his and the Niwa family's age-old conflict. But he did try regardless, and Daisuke was still alive and smiling as he always was. In a way that was enough - just as long as he was able to keep the monster at bay without letting things go so far as to cause permanent damage, then that was all he desired.

The lunch ritual was the perfect intermediary ground for the two to take their time apart from all this extra baggage and just enjoy the uncomplicated process of eating food together… no strings attached.

And Satoshi liked this uncomplicatedness… so different from what his life usually was like. It was just a relief in so many ways.

"Ahhhh…." Daisuke sighed again.

Satoshi once more decided to ignore it. It was probably the food again. Daisuke loved to sigh at food when he received pleasure from it. In fact he sighed a lot. Usually for the most obscure and unnecessary of reasons, as Satoshi had observed. Nothing new about it.

"Ahhhh…" he sighed one more time.

Satoshi gave an inward groan. It didn't take a super-genius to figure out that Daisuke had something he wanted to say. Daisuke was an extremely nice guy, but he was also so forcefully transparent that it at times almost killed Satoshi.

"Something the matter?" Satoshi decided to ask just so he didn't have to suffer another sigh with which Daisuke wanted attention.

"Oh, it's nothing really…" Daisuke said in a dreamy fashion.

Satoshi rolled his eyes. Why couldn't Daisuke ever just say what was on his mind straight up? He always had to play it around the bend.

"Oh?" Satoshi droned unemotionally, not wanting to spend any more energy than was necessary on whatever was on Daisuke's mind.

"Yeah… Ahhh…" Daisuke responded with another sigh.

Satoshi responded with silence, not really feeling partial to playing games right now.

"Yeah, it's just… it's just so great being in love," Daisuke said wistfully.

"Mm-hmm…" Satoshi said non-committally. He guessed it correctly. It was yet another one of those completely pointless things Daisuke liked to entertain. Something good must've happened today. "Harada Riku-san, eh?"

Daisuke visibly jolted… or more likely startled from the comment. "Eheheheh… Am… Am I that transparent?" Daisuke answered embarrassed, his cheeks flaring reddish as he nervously rubbed the back of his head.

_Yes you are. _"No… just a wild stab in the dark," Satoshi said as he focused his eyes to his bento.

"Oh, well… you're right anyway, Hiwatari-kun," Daisuke grinned.

_Yes, I know I am, _Satoshi thought.

"But… it's still really great…" Daisuke said quietly as he leaned back against the enclosed stairwell wall.

As Daisuke gave another dreamily satisfied and deep sigh, Satoshi almost started to despair. Was he going to continue that all through lunch? Seriously. He had obviously spent way too much time with the Harada Twins. They had started to rub off on him. One with the "deep, meaningful relationship" Daisuke couldn't help but continuously want to announce to the world, and the other for just being a damn girl… with all the extra stuff _that_ brought along with it - most notable being the increase of those incessant daydreamy _sighs_.

A double whammo attack. Daisuke never stood a chance…

"So what happened?" Satoshi asked more out of giving Daisuke the opportunity to tell what he obviously was dying to say than for any real interest in finding out what it was this time.

"Oh, it's nothing. You wouldn't be interested, Hiwatari-kun," Daisuke said, apparently trying to not sound too eager.

_You got that right. _"No, go ahead. I'm itching to know," Satoshi droned out loud with the emotional content of a pepper shaker.

"Okay, here's what happened," Daisuke jumped at the opportunity as he turned to face Satoshi better, the floodgates finally open. "So I just met Riku-san yesterday, and… oh, I still remember how her voice sounded on the phone when I agreed to meet her… so pretty and soft and charming, yet firm. I just wanted to kiss her right there through the receiver… Anyway, then…"

Satoshi half-fazed out. He'd heard Daisuke's praising of the older Harada enough to pretty much know the general content of what his friend was about to say without the need to pay attention to the details.

As Satoshi sat there in silence, with Daisuke chattering about his "unbelievably wonderful and sweet date" yesterday, Satoshi let his own thoughts drift. To his great consternation he suddenly found himself once more confronted with the strange feelings that had been bothering him for a while now when it came to Daisuke's wonderfully blossoming love life. Satoshi supposed it was nothing, but still hearing Daisuke gushing about how wonderful Riku was and how happy he was with her Satoshi, to his great amazement, found himself feeling slightly uncomfortable listening to it, something that he had never to his knowledge been bothered by in the past.

He didn't quite know how to dress the things he was feeling into words, which already was something that irked the normally articulate genius, but those odd feelings were regardless baffling him to an extent that he didn't like. At times he even wished that Daisuke would somehow reign in his sappy, lovey-dovey attitude even a slight bit… particularly in front of him.

"…That new bistro was such a fantastic place with such a great selection of food. Riku-san was so cute when she nibbled on this huge bagel and then she couldn't even finish it…" Daisuke went on. Obviously Satoshi's wish wasn't going to be fulfilled anytime soon.

Satoshi groaned silently. What was it that had lately made him feel this way every time Daisuke started gushing on about Riku so much? It never really bothered him before, and nothing else they talked of made him feel this strangely. Not that he couldn't handle it, but Satoshi didn't like to have too many unknowns in his life. He always felt that once one detail was ignored and left to be, it could in the long run prove to be a huge mistake that would end up biting him in the behind one beautiful day. And Krad was already doing enough biting for him to not need any more.

Giving out a noiseless sigh, Satoshi leaned against the wall behind him and looked up to the sky, fazing Daisuke's chatter completely from his ears and allowing his private thoughts to drift.

Somehow his current condition of illogical turmoil had been getting more and more prominent following the whole Argentine episode a few weeks back. Exactly what had happened was still somewhat shrouded in mystery to him, but something certainly had changed during that "rescue and containment" operation. Of that he was 100 percent sure of.

Originally it wasn't supposed to be a lot more to him than to capture and eliminate Argentine, and on the side possibly assist Niwa in getting the younger Harada Twin back, but a lot of things happened on that mission that he hadn't really expected to happen. One of these of course was his heart-to-heart talk with Daisuke, and his admitting to him how he most likely didn't have a lot of life left to him as per being a Hikari descendant, the downer family characteristic being that Hikaris were notoriously short on their lifespan. It was perhaps a gloomy idea to entertain, but Daisuke deserved to know; both that and the secrets behind Dark and Krad, as well as the histories of the Hikari and the Niwa families. That had certainly been something that had at the same time brought Daisuke closer to him by a large margin, but at the same time it had also set an adamant boundary that was to forever separate the two. It wasn't as if Satoshi liked this idea that his fate would forever be tied to the Hikari curse, and he really did want to believe in Daisuke's encouraging words that everything would turn our just fine, but the facts were still unsurpassable.

But for Satoshi personally, perhaps even more significant was what had happened later on. After all, he had had plenty of time to get adjusted to his life situation, so when something else impeded in the steady pace of his existence, it was likely to cause a lot more flares to go off through its sheer unusualness. Like so many times since that event, his mind's eye once more conjured up the sight of the crumbling tower before him; the sense of the salty, magic-filled winds; the knowing death-throws masquerading as a final showdown of a great artwork high up in that ivory tower; and then the startling falling figure of a young girl, plummeting to her death from the place she should never have been a fixture of to begin with.

The whole scene still came to Satoshi's mind as vividly as if it was happening right before his eyes. He couldn't really say all the details of what had happened were entirely clear to him, but some things were still significant in their own right to cause him to want to go through them again and again in an effort to find the answers he was looking for.

The ring.

The magical ring Daisuke's father had given to him. One that allowed him to suppress his other side for one time only.

He used it that time to save the girl. Exactly why he had got so agitated upon seeing her fall as to actually yell out her name so uncharacteristically and feeling a sharp twist of fear overtake him upon realising that, if he didn't act immediately, the Harada girl would end up splattered on the ground. It felt oddly _more_ than just the shock of seeing a classmate in danger. It felt, for one reason or another, almost… personal. A zing of something deep in his heart that he felt no other girl would ever be able to elicit the same way… what ever the significance behind that ultimately was.

But even more bafflingly to him was why he had transformed into Krad's form like that. He had tried to think up all possible reasons for it, but couldn't reach a conclusion that fully satisfied him all the way through. Perhaps it was merely a side-effect of the ring itself that he was just not told anything about, but even so a full transformation like that made little sense to him.

And that didn't explain why this particular time he hadn't felt the amount of pain he usually did with these transformations. Even when he had himself willingly grown wings it had never been this painless, let alone doing a full body switch. Perhaps it was just the adrenaline flowing that had made him ignore it, but still Satoshi couldn't discount it so easily. Not to mention the gentle tugging of his heart he felt upon setting Risa down gently, hearing her inquisitive words asking who he was, an answer he couldn't give her, and then the following warmth he felt when he transformed back to his normal self a little while later. These were all sensations irregular to him, and it was the inexplicable nature of them that caused so much uncertainty in him to not be able to let these questions lie.

Perhaps it was just his imagination as he had originally thought, but… for some reason he didn't like this idea. It was almost as if he didn't… _want_… it to be just his imagination. Though at the same time he wasn't sure as to exactly what he _did _want it to be.

It was all just so incredibly hazy and it annoyed him a bit that these issues were making him so frustratingly indecisive and confused.

There was one further interpretation he also entertained a little, but felt it was a bit too absurd to be a viable explanation. Not to his rational mind at least, and emotional foundations were notoriously unreliable to be used in stead of a cool and logical alternative… as hopelessly romantic that notion otherwise was. He didn't even grace this with any more thought than that.

Satoshi glanced to his side. Daisuke was still blabbing on about the many virtues of Riku Harada, completely oblivious that Satoshi wasn't even listening anymore. He wondered about Daisuke, and how could he always seem to be so happy despite everything.

Sure he had a supportive family, an alter ego who didn't try to hurt him all the time, a girlfriend he was crazy about, friends… And to top it all off he had even concern for other people to spare. But could anybody really ever be _that_ content with their lives? Even despite the unique circumstances his life was saddled with, how could he still always seem so carefree, while Satoshi had to walk on eggshells in order to keep anybody else from suffering, let alone having any time to work on to try and make himself happy? Futile as the latter goal was to achieve for him, as he kept on reminding himself.

He tried to imagine what it'd be like to be Daisuke, but somehow thinking that felt so preposterous. As if he could ever come even near knowing what being like that felt like, or what it'd be like to have the things Daisuke did. He didn't have any family of his own apart from that bastard of a step-father of his. He didn't have friends apart from Daisuke, and even that mostly seemed to have originated from Daisuke pushing into his company than Satoshi welcoming it. Krad was just an incessant pain he couldn't get rid of. And a girlfriend… as if that would ever happen, regardless of all the fangirls surrounding him. For one Krad would make sure _that_ would never happen, let alone he couldn't imagine anybody willing to be subjecting themselves to withstanding Satoshi's many problems that he couldn't divulge on about anyway.

But, he supposed there was no real harm in indulging in some kind of utopistic dreaming. It even actually made him want to smile a bit thinking about the absurdity of him having a happy life. How he'd have a nice home with loving parents… or heck, even a Chief Commander Hiwatari who wasn't a douche. No Krad. Friends he could hang around with, and even smile with. And maybe even a girlfriend. Maybe not somebody like Riku, who was a bit too rough around the edges for Satoshi's taste, and certainly none of those girls with star-crossed eyes toward him who saw him as an idol, but rather someone more… well, something else. It wasn't as if Satoshi had any idea what he really wanted, and when reminding himself of how futile such thoughts were in the first place, he never bothered to go too deep into even _trying _to clarify his desires.

But looking how happy these things made Daisuke… well, Satoshi couldn't really deny that it _would _be nice to have the same too. As illogical as wanting such things for him were. And still there remained that inexplicable sense of warmth that still lingered in his chest even after the space of three weeks. _The time to be reapin', the time to be sowin', the green leaves of summer are callin' me home…_

"Hiwatari-kun!"

Satoshi incongruously snapped out of his inner musings as he turned his gaze toward his red-headed friend sitting next to him who, Satoshi noted, looked rather miffed.

"Niwa," Satoshi said robotically as if he didn't notice Daisuke's expression at all.

Daisuke looked disheartened at his blue-haired companion, "Jeez, Hiwatari-kun! Weren't you listening at all?"

"Of course I was. What makes you think I wasn't?" Satoshi responded soberly, face completely unflustered.

This response, and the way it was said, made Daisuke to have a double-take. It was always so difficult to figure out whether Satoshi was being sincere or lying his ears off, but figuring out that it would be ultimately fruitless trying to argue with the genius, Daisuke let it go. Sighing deeply he said, "Okay. Sorry for doubting you, Hiwatari-kun. You just seemed to be so lost in your thoughts that I thought you were bored or something…"

"No. Hearing of your date with Riku-san was very riveting," Satoshi said in his normal monotone.

Daisuke wondered if Satoshi was making fun of him. It probably wouldn't be the first time either. But hand it to Satoshi that he'd figure out some smart thing to say that would only embarrass Daisuke more if he voiced his doubts. With that thought, Daisuke lamely summarised what he had been spending a good deal of the lunch period talking about, "Anyway, it was a great date, I love Riku-san a lot, and she's the prettiest girl I've ever seen."

"All right," Satoshi said in acceptance as Daisuke went on to take a long sip from his can of juice as a means to escape from a possibly awkward situation from developing between the two. Satoshi noted this, and a little mischievous thought popped into his head on the fly that he just couldn't pass up on. "I think Risa-san's sexier, though," he added off-handed.

Daisuke almost choked on his juice, spending the next 20 seconds spluttering and coughing, his face flaring into a deep crimson hue, "W-W-WHAT!?"

Satoshi gave a satisfied, inward grin. Daisuke was so easy to tease, and this time he really was asking for it. For Satoshi, _that was so worth it…_

_

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This was originally supposed to be some pure humour fluff, but half of it inexplicably turned out to be more dramatic. I don't know if this was really a very interesting fic, but at least I finally finished it. Reviews are welcome as always._


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